Satellite radio is another broadcast service available to automobiles and other mobile vehicles, joining the longstanding and well-established amplitude modulation (AM) radio, frequency modulation (FM) radio, and television broadcasts. Over 40% of radio listening in the United States takes place in mobile vehicles, the most popular location for receiving radio broadcasts.
A satellite radio service provider uses one or more satellites to broadcast content for each of its channels, and often has terrestrial repeaters to improve broadcast coverage in areas of satellite signal blockage. A satellite signal can contain hundreds of channels, the number depending on bandwidth and channel compression, and encoding parameters. Many of these broadcasts may be delivered with additional data such as station identification, song titles, and program schedules.
Satellite radio digital radio services may be offered at an automobile dealership to an owner of a vehicle having a factory-installed satellite radio, or through traditional marketing services such as bulk mailing, radio or television advertising, and telemarketing. Re-marketing attempts to obtain customers who were either not made aware of their options or declined to accept satellite radio service are often handled through similar marketing approaches. In addition, satellite radio broadcasters and automobile manufacturers are unable currently to target advertising or service announcements to specific groups of people via the broadcast medium.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to have a system and method for sending introductory satellite radio offers, automobile service announcements, and other types of marketing messages that are targeted to a specific owner or a group of owners of vehicles equipped with a satellite radio, and to solicit responses to the targeted messages. It is an object of this invention, therefore, to provide a method for sending targeted messages to mobile vehicles, and to overcome the deficiencies and obstacles described above.